Ryan Griffis currently teaches new media art at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He often works under the name Temporary Travel Office and collaborates with many other writers, artists, activists and interesting people in the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor.The Temporary Travel Office produces a variety of services relating to tourism and technology aimed at exploring the non-rational connections existing between public and private spaces. The Travel Office has operated in a variety of locations, including Missouri, Chicago, Southern California and Norway.

Networked Performance pointed me toward an interview (download in PDF)with Networked Publics speaker Henry Jenkins and Networked Publics friend danah boyd about Myspace. The site, popular with teenagers, has become increasingly controversial as parents and the press raise concerns about the openness of information on the site and the vulnerability this supposedly poses to predators (Henry points out that only .1% of abductions are by strangers) and the behavior of teens towards each other (certainly nothing new, only now in persistent form). In another essay on Identity Production in Networked Culture, danah suggests that Myspace is popular not only because the technology makes new forms of interaction possible, but because older hang-outs such as the mall and the convenience store are prohibiting teens from congregating and roller rinks and burger joints are disappearing.

This begs the question, is Myspace media or is it space? Architecture theorists have long had this thorn in their side. "This will kill that," wrote Victor Hugo with respect to the book and the building. In the early 1990s, concern about a dwindling public culture and the character of late twentieth century urban space led us to investigate JÃ¼rgen Habermas's idea of the public sphere. But the public sphere, for Habermas is a forum, something that, for the most part, emerges in media and in the institutions of the state:

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's ...

SWITCH Journal is proud to announce the launch of Issue 22: A Special
Preview Edition to ISEA 2006/ ZeroOne San Jose.

As San Jose State University and the CADRE Laboratory are serving as
the academic host for the ZeroOne San Jose /ISEA 2006 Symposium,
SWITCH has dedicated itself to serving as an official media
correspondent of the Festival and Symposium. SWITCH has focused the
past three issues of publication prior to ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006
on publishing content reflecting on the themes of the symposium. Our
editorial staff has interviewed and reported on artists, theorists,
and practitioners interested in the intersections of Art & Technology
as related to the themes of ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. While some
of those featured in SWITCH are part of the festival and symposium,
others provide a complimentary perspective.

Issue 22 focuses on the intersections of CADRE and ZeroOne San Jose/
ISEA 2006. Over the past year, students at the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media have been working intensely with artists on two different
residency projects for the festival – “Social Networking” with Antoni
Muntadas and the City as Interface Residency, “Karaoke Ice” with
Nancy Nowacek, Marina Zurkow & Katie Salen. Carlos Castellanos,
James Morgan, Aaron Siegel, all give us a sneak preview of their
projects which will be featured at the ISEA 2006 exhibition. Alumni
Sheila Malone introduces ex_XX:: post position, an exhibition
celebrating the 20th anniversary of the CADRE Institute that will run
as a parallel exhibition to ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. LeE
Montgomery provides a preview of NPR (Neighborhood Public Radio)
presence at ...

The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) has released a special issue of their journal, Cartographic Perspectives:
Art and Mapping
Issue 53, Winter 2006
Edited by Denis Wood and and John Krygier
Price: $25
The issue includes articles by kanarinka, Denis Wood, Dalia Varanka and John Krygier, and an extensive catalogue of map artists compiled by Denis Wood.

The topic of June at the - empyre - mailing list will be Liquid Narratives. The concept of 'liquid narrative' is interesting in that it allows to think about the unfoldings of contemporary languages beyond tech achievements, by relating user controlled applications with formats such as the essay (as described by Adorno in "Der Essay als Form", The essay as a form) and procedures related to the figure of the narrator (as described by Benjamin in his writings about Nikolai Leskov).
Both authors are accute critics of modern culture, but a lot of his
ideas can be expanded towards contemporary culture. As a matter of
fact, one of the main concerns in Benjamin's essay is a description of
how the rise of modernism happens on account of an increasing nprivilege of information over knowledge, which is even more intense nowadays. To understand this proposal, it is important to remember how Benjamin distinguishes between an oral oriented knowledge, that results from 'an experience that goes from person to person' and is sometimes anonymous, from the information and authoritative oriented print culture.
One of the aspects of this discussion is how contemporary networked culture rescues this 'person to person' dimension, given the distributed and non-authoritative procedures that technologies such as the GPS, mobile phones and others stimulate.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The press release recently posted was an unedited draft and the fact checking was not yet complete, so the exact accuracy of the quotes is still in question.Once an edited and fact checked version is ready, it will be posted again to the list.If any misrepresentations are found, they will be corrected after the statements are verified.Sorry for any confusion.

>> The FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) > conference is pleased to announce the Call for Workshops for the > 2007 conference, being held September 24-27 in beautiful Victoria, > British Columbia, Canada.>> FOSS4G is the premier conference for the open source geospatial > community, providing a place for developers, users, and people new > to open source geospatial to get a full-immersion experience in > both established and leading> edge geospatial technologies.>> This is your chance to showcase your favorite application, > integration solution, or other topic. You will use your superior > classroom skills to lead a group of attendees through your chosen > topic in either a half-day or ninety> minute lab or classroom format. Half-day workshops will be > delivered on Monday, September 24 (the Workshops day), while the > ninety minute workshops will run concurrently with the > presentations during the remainder of the> conference.>> While we are open to workshops on a wide range of topics, we > strongly encourage workshop submissions on the following topics:>> * Practical Introduction to ___________> * Interoperability> * NeoGeography and NovelGeography> * Using a Software Stack> * 3D Worlds>> In the tradition of previous FOSS4G events, we expect that the > majority of workshops will be "hands on", with participants seated > in front of computers and able to follow along with the instructor, > working directly with the> software and applications under discussion.>> Be prepared to spend considerable effort in creating your workshop. > Past experience has shown that a high quality workshop requires > about three days of preparation for each hour of presentation time. > As part of this preparation you will be expected to develop > material for attendees to take> away with them, such as handouts, a 'workbook', CDROM, etc.>> In recognition of this effort, workshop presenters will receive a > reduction in the price of conference registration:>> * free registration for delivering a half-day workshop> * half-price registration for delivering a 90-minute workshop>> Because of limited space, you may want to consider submitting two > versions of your topic, one for each length format.>> Please visit the workshops page on our website to download the > submission templates and instructions for sending them in:>> http://www.foss4g2007.org/workshops.html>> The deadline for workshop submissions is February 28, 2007. Submit > early,submit often!> ________________________________________________________>

> Back from the printer and available now.>> Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices.> Edited by Nicole Antebi, Colin Dickey, and Robby Herbst> joaap.org or email me.>> An odd wonderful book, the first from the Journal of Aesthetics and > Protest Press. While the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest may be > constituted as a standard bearer for the "possibilities" for > "futures" driven by art and activist practices- this collection of > essays and interviews looks squarely at the implications of the > perceaved personal, public and ideological wreckages that > ceaselessly pile up, hurl at our feet and choke our wings (to > paraphrase Walter Benjamin).>> Contents include a look at the afterlife of the Valerie Solanas and > her Scum Manifesto, an exploration of the Digger inspired > Morningstar Commune in Northern California which was deeded to God, > a look at the monuments that remember forgotten mine wars in > Southern Illinois, A consideration of the finality of death and its > implication for the Act Up, and a series of interviews with > contemporary artists.>> Contributors include: Catherine Lord, Doug Harvey, Sam Green, Sam > Durant, Yoshua Okon, Eduardo Abaroa, William Pope L., Temporary > Services, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Catherine Hollander, Zoe Trodd, > David Schafer, Richard Dedomenici, Alex Juhasz, Sarah Kanouse, Lisa > Anne Auerbach, Sarah Lewison, John Conley, and Tommy Williford.